Dr. Selwyn Rogers Jr. recounts his journey to establish an adult Level I trauma center at the University of Chicago Medicine, driven by high-profile tragedies, community advocacy, and a vision to treat trauma as a chronic public-health issue rather than a single event. He describes the center’s launch, the role of hospital systems and community partnerships, hospital-based violence prevention, and the broader social determinants that shape health and life expectancy on Chicago’s South Side. Further reading: Hope — Beyond Firearm Trauma in NEJM Author: Selwyn O. Rogers, Jr., M.D., M.P.H. https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp2214971 Biography Selwyn O. Rogers Jr., MD, MPH, FACS, is a widely respected surgeon and public health expert. As founding director of the University of Chicago Medicine Trauma Center, Dr. Rogers is building an interdisciplinary team of specialists to treat patients who suffer injury from life-threatening events, such as car crashes, serious falls and gun violence. His team works with leaders in the city's trauma network to expand trauma care on the South Side. Dr. Rogers has served in leadership capacities at health centers across the country, including most recently as vice president and chief medical officer for the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. Dr. Rogers has also served as the chair of surgery at Temple University School of Medicine and as the division chief of trauma, burns and surgical critical care at Harvard Medical School. While at Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH), he helped launch the Center for Surgery and Public Health to understand the nature, quality and utilization of surgical care nationally and internationally. Additionally, as executive vice president for community health engagement, Dr. Rogers works with faculty across the University of Chicago as well as members of the community to develop a multidisciplinary approach to trauma care and health disparities. His work will help enhance the understanding of social factors that affect victims of violence and underserved populations, in addition to identifying approaches necessary to achieving better outcomes for trauma victims. Dr. Rogers' clinical and research interests focus on understanding the healthcare needs of underserved populations. He has published numerous articles relating to health disparities and the impact of race and ethnicity on surgical outcomes. Transcript My name is Dr. Selwyn Rogers, Jr. I serve as a founding director of the Adult Trauma Center at the University of Chicago Medicine. As with any talk or speech to any audience, it's both important for the speaker to know the audience, but it's very helpful for the audience to know the speaker. For those in podcast land, you can't see me, so let me give you a few descriptors of what you'd be seeing if I was in a room with you. You'll be seeing a 6'4 black male who is cisgender, happily married, father of three African-American sons, a birthright citizen of the United States of America, who has a son who's gay, and a sister who's transgender. Those are descriptors of categories, of definitions of who Selwyn Rogers is, but they're only small descriptors. At a cocktail party, if I was to introduce myself, I would say I'm a trauma surgeon, which is what I do. I was compelled to join the University of Chicago Medicine eight years ago, leaving a very cozy life as a chief medical officer in Galveston, Texas, where I served as the chief medical officer with a beach house and a very comfortable living. And I was asked to consider standing up an adult level one trauma center on the south side of Chicago at the University of Chicago. Now, many people have been to the city of Chicago as I have been, but I actually had never stopped to think about the fact that there was no adult level one trauma center on the south side of Chicago. It had actually never crossed my mind. And so when I was first being wooed, invited. Recruited, I thought long and hard, and my kids are very wise, they said, Dad, do you want to work that hard? You seem pretty comfortable right now. And as I reflected on the question and their point of view, it came to me that at the age of 50, which is what I was eight years ago, I had done several things that were, if you will, significant. But at that point in my life, I was very eager to do something of significance. And that's what brought me to the University of Chicago Medicine, to stand up in adult Leavenworth Trauma Center. Now, the story of an adult trauma center, I'm going to share with you. A allegory around one of the greatest improvisational jazz artists of all time, the great Miles Davis. And Miles was a bad dude, and bad in a good way, if you will, as the kids would say. And they probably would say something else, like he was a bad, I'm not gonna say that, mother, father. And in the summer, specifically August of 1959, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and Bill Evans got together and over a very short window of time, produced, created the greatest jazz album of all time, Kind of Blue. Now, not everyone may love jazz music, one of America's original music forms. But that album in particular is special. And I had the opportunity on vacation just a few weeks ago to read a biography of that event, the creation of Kind of Blue album. And the name of the book is Three Shades of Blue. The author did an incredible job talking about before, talking about the event of creation of the album, and talking about after. And the highlight, because of the greatness of Miles, but also the greatness of John Coltrane, the greatness of Bill Evans, there was a lot of stories about Miles Davis. And I'd always been a fan of Miles Davis music, But this gave me an opportunity to understand Miles Davis, the person. And over the course of his lifetime of constant reinvention, he was kind of a hard person to please, a bit of a perfectionist is how he's defined. And he was never satisfied with what he had done. He was always looking to do something next. And along the way he gave a lot of interviews and made a lot of statements and one in particular has always stuck with me and that will be a theme about telling the story of the launch of the adult trauma center at the university of chicago medicine on chicago's south side And the story that Miles tells is that if you hear a note, that's just an event. It's the next note that matters. And that's a very powerful metaphor in my mind about trauma in general. All of our lives are affected by trauma. Small trauma, big trauma, but trauma nonetheless. And we often think about trauma as physical injury. A fist, a bat, a bullet, a knife, a sword. Machete, whatever, that creates physical damage to the body. And the consequences of the physical damage is harm to an organ, harm to a limb, or potentially loss of life. And we often talk about trauma in a very binary way, alive or dead. But trauma is so much more complicated than that. And so without telling stories, and stories are powerful, it's hard to understand the full scope of trauma or the creation of a trauma center. And no story about trauma in the city of Chicago can be told without telling the story of Benjamin Benji Wilson. Benji, as he was fondly called, was an 18-year-old black male teenager who was destined to be the number one pick in the subsequent years NBA draft. When he was a star player at Simeon Rice High School here in the state of Chicago on the outside, a school that's produced numerous NBA players, he had, at the time, one of the first definitions of positionless basketball. For those who don't follow basketball, every team at any given time only has five players in organized basketball. The five players have very distinct roles because most players can do one or two things, but not everything. Benji was an exception. Benji could do everything. He was good with the rock, as they say. He had a great handle. He could play point guard at 6'8", 220 pounds. He was a great shooter, so he could play shooting guard. He was pretty quick, so he can defend just about any other team's best player so he can play small forward. He was also a very magnificent rebounder, which is often the role of the power forward. And he could defend and protect the basket given the size and his abilities so he could play center. So he could play every position. And on the counter, not everyone could play him. So it was an imbalance of an individual who can play any position, defend any person on the opposing team. Benji Wilson had incredible ability on the basketball court to improvise. He was not, if you will, a one-trick pony or only had one set of skills that were not adaptable. He was highly adaptable on the court. And we see it today with some players who have that ability to, if you will, play any position. And more and more players who traditionally are tall, they look like they should be centers and rebounders, are now playing point guard. Probably the first person who broke that mole was Magic Johnson and his ability to play point guard given his size at 6'9 and play center and all the things that Magic Johnson has done. More and more players have been able to do that. You know, someone like Kevin Durant, who is 6'11", 6'10 and shoots the lights out like a shooting guard. It's truly remarkable that the skill set of some of the biggest players have also just incredibly grown over time. And some of the younger players, like someone senior in high school, can make a jump from high school like LeBron James to the NBA because of their skill set. But back in 1984, unfortunately, Benji left school with his girlfriend at the time, the mother of his baby, their baby, together. And Benji, paying attention to his girlfriend, talking to each other, bumped into a kid walking into a store. And the kid was another 18-year-old teenager on the south side, Mr. Moore. 18 year old kid bumps into him that should have been nothing more and sorry man I
